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By helping Obama win Florida, Congressman Robert Wexler earned himself a higher profile in Washington, but the new administration has also placed him in some no-win foreign-policy situations.
Wexler, who is Jewish and has a large Jewish constituency in his central Palm Beach and north Broward district, has the unenviable task of brokering relations between the Israelis and an Obama administration that has been tougher on that nation than any U.S. president in a generation.
He’s also chairman of a House subcommittee that deals with Europe, and in that capacity, it was his job to smooth over some terribly impolitic remarks about Russia that Vice President Joe Biden made to the Wall Street Journal.
At a committee hearing with Russian diplomats yesterday in Washington, D.C., Wexler began his introductory remarks ominously:
It is hard
to be overly optimistic about U.S.-Russian relations as we approach the
one-year anniversary of the Russian-Georgian war, Russia’s military and
political presence in the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and
Abkhazia, which is hardening. President Medvedev renews threats to
place short-range missiles on Russia’s border with Poland, and another
prominent Chechen human rights activist is brutally murdered without
judicial recourse.
There is no more pressing
issue on the U.S.-Russian reset agenda than Iran’s development of
nuclear weapons. To date, Russia’s actions suggest anything but a real
partner in deterring Iran’s nuclear program. In fact, Russia has failed
to implement Security Council resolutions and their accompanying
sanctions and continues to build the Bashir Nuclear Power Plant and
provide the Iranian government with lethal weapons, even signing an
agreement to sell the S-300 anti- missile defense system to Tehran.Twenty years after the
revolutions in 1989, in the fall of the Iron Curtain, many Central and
Eastern European nations feel increasingly threatened by a resurgent
Russia. America must take these concerns seriously, continue to
unequivocally reject a Russian sphere of influence, assist Europe in
its quest for energy security, expand the visa waiver program to
include allies, and consult closely with European governments,
including Poland and the Czech Republic, on missile defense.
[Transcript from Congressional Quarterly]
